Just finished my second car part related image.
Again done entirely with Bryce 7 Pro apart from the text.
Loosely based on a clutch master cylinder.
I was going to connect a pipe from the fluid reservoir to one of the
connectors on the cylinder but I'm struggling to make a curvey rubber hose with Bryce
and didn't want to use other apps for it, so I settled for fluid spill instead.

I didn't know where to post this, I was going to put it in my first submission post but
saw this one instead. Hope you like it. As always I'm open to criticism or advice
on how to improve my images.

Wow, StuartB4 - 05 September 2012 06:44 PM, your Bryce models and the render are very fine indeed. I'm amazed at the modelling that can be done with Bryce. I like to use Hexagon which allows more organic styles, but for engineering type work Bryce seems to do the job so well, in the hands of a skilled modelling like you.

Of the DAz products, for sheer clarity and beauty of final rendering (with the right settings as taught by David and Horo and co) , along with the ease of getting large scale landscapes as well as small objects, Bryce seems to be well ahead of the game for me. Reality / luxrender with DSudio4 is great too but I've only managed to use it with close scenes successfully and the render overhead with a complex scene seem large.

I'm learning Carrara and have not yet achieved the same quality of rendering as with Bryce - but still have much to learn.

Here is a Bryce render of my own RedClay Rhino's (modeled in Hexagon - based on an actual smoke-fired clay rhino I made in terracotta). I love the way the HDRI lighting and Bryce-tweeked textures make everything look so sharp and clean.

@Keryna...very nice models. I'm just getting into the whole model area, so looking for some other 'ware to create them. Is Hexagon hard to use? Started in Carrara awhile back, but the problem is that while it is another superb 'ware, if one gives it a break for a few days' time, it's hard to remember what does what again. One needs to devote time to it to get habitual with the buttons and options etc., of course, where with Bryce, it's that little bit easier.

@@tlantis...I always want to get a closeup, do a flyover, and go beyond the trees in your sadie renders. Now that's a real compliment :)

@ LordHardDriven.....Back to the past. I saw a Delorean driving through Barkby in Leicestershire about 3 weeks ago.
Very nice image.

@ Horo

Have you tried metaballs?

I did try metaballs, I used them for the clip through the end of the pin
and the fluid spill. I did try using them for the pipe but wasn't happy with the result.

@ Keryna.....Thanks for the kind comments. I did try Hexagon for a while but I need to learn a bit more.
Never tried HDRI so I will have to have a go at that too, seen some really good images using it.
Your image reminds me of the little wooden ornaments everyone seemed to have in the 70's.
Nice models and love the colour.

@ @tlantis.....Thanks. Nice image, I tried stuff like that in the past but never got the results I wanted.
Just been looking at Wings3d, seems very strange to use. I used to like Truespace for modeling.

I guess it is hard to begin with but the manual IS fairly good, and there are tons of Video tutorials out there on the internet (eg GeekAt Play has many great ones on modelling). Tuts from other modeling systems can also be used as there are similar types of controls in most modelers.

I found that it took by brain a few months (working on and off) to rearrange itself to "see" the 3D models properly so that it became easier all of a sudden to kind of "get" how to create and adjust and maneuver your models. Once the brain was trained it really helped. (Im hoping this training might help hold of old age brain decay for us as well as provide many years of fun!)

I guess it is hard to begin with but the manual IS fairly good, and there are tons of Video tutorials out there on the internet (eg GeekAt Play has many great ones on modelling). Tuts from other modeling systems can also be used as there are similar types of controls in most modelers.

I found that it took by brain a few months (working on and off) to rearrange itself to "see" the 3D models properly so that it became easier all of a sudden to kind of "get" how to create and adjust and maneuver your models. Once the brain was trained it really helped. (Im hoping this training might help hold of old age brain decay for us as well as provide many years of fun!)

For what it's worth, keeping the mind active especially with problem/puzzle solving has been identified as a great way to avoid the loss of brain power often associated with old age. My Mother, bless her soul is in her 90's and still as sharp as when she was young. Two of the main ways she stays that way according to her, is solving NY Times like crossword puzzles (read as not very easy) and participating in regular weekly debates about current social issues with a group of friends over breakfast at Panera's (a popular coffee shop and bakery type restaurant chain).

@Lord...aha..."flux capacitor"...it should have clicked looking at the rear section. What was it that it sounded like again...oh yeah, BERRUMM, berrumm :) Actually, I saw all the 'Futures'...McFly and the Doc (I thought the last one was the best).

I know the films more for the producer, Robert Zemechis, than the films themselves, as he's one of my favs. Roll on: 'The Polar Express', 'Cast Away' and 'Forest Gump' (all with the wonderful Tom Hanks), and so many more.

Two new works. The main area is rather small. I used 2 2d surface them both with mirror metals. to give it a larger appearance. cover the the line with clouds the 2 version is that i changed the Terrain on the cliff,s. I edit the last render. I,m still in the learning (Big) curve. Thanks for any input.

Came across a ‘spitter’ model in one of those free CDs, so had to do a render of it. Usually mods’ are static e.g. furniture, food, instruments...etc., however, as the ‘spit’ is obviously moving and shooting, had to add in some wind-buffs signatures on wings, propeller and guns (cones stretched out).

Motion blur, DOF stuff would give additional dynamics, but didn’t want to bother with Photoshop, as Bryce kinda’ makes it still work. A lovely sports car model came included on the CD, too. Hmmm...that's the next project sorted, I guess, when time permits ;)

Here's what I've been working on - mostly mucking around with V4 stuff on the Genesis figures and trying a topless and sideless "stage" (created in Modo) so I can use IBL. No sun but ranged Gradient spot lights. Also rendered with True Ambiance.
Much better viewed al full size :-)

That's super Dan, the lighting in the shadows where their legs are is particularly good. In tests, the hair component is really holding things up, do you find the same thing or have you found a way around that? I've tried tinkering with the transparency settings (switch from blend to normal) and that has helped a bit - but still, hair hold the render up quite a bit.

Stanford xyzrgb_dragon at 1/32 of original resolution. Diffusion grey 127/127/12/ at 33%. All other material channels 0. No radial, no sun. Obviously a TA render, the noise is giving that away. So, how is it lit? By the DryWood HDRI - no backdrop, Intensity and Specularity 0, HDRI Effect 750. And where is the HDRI? Invisible inside the dragon. Boost light was be used, otherwise the colours are low contrast.

Same render settings, uses the Tourbillion Garden HDRI at HDRI Effect 400. Nothing else changed. There is no light visible. No transparency on the dragon, it casts shadows. Surprisingly, TA finds the HDRI light source within the dragon nevertheless. And it treats it as if it were around the dragon.

Looking good Horo, my conclusion was that in light from inside TA still saw the HDRI as being infinitely distant. I've not tested yet if there is any difference in the effect, between this and standard HDRI providing TA. It would be nice to think there was.

Same render settings, uses the Tourbillion Garden HDRI at HDRI Effect 400. Nothing else changed. There is no light visible. No transparency on the dragon, it casts shadows. Surprisingly, TA finds the HDRI light source within the dragon nevertheless. And it treats it as if it were around the dragon.

Both of these look great Horo, but something is wrong. If the hdri is inside and TA gathers light from surfaces then the results we see in these examples shouldn't be possible.

One bug I noticed was in regard to soft shadows. If you set an hdri to light from inside, but also enable soft shadows the result is that the hdri no longer behaves as a point. In tests that I conducted it almost cancelled the "from inside" setting.

I will test this out again when I get home. What is especially odd is that I dont think you used hdri for point sources at all so the shadows setting shouldn't have changed anything. Who knows.

Thanks David and on the Mac, Blend Transparency is not Multi Processor aware. And the instant the ray march hits something with B-trans it slows dramatically. Sounds like it's the same on the PC.

And of course transparency is where you would really like all that processor power!

One thing that helps (if there's not a lot of other transparency in the scene) is to drop the Max Ray Depth down form the default of 6 to 5 or less.

I'm not convinced this is exactly what is happening. When a ray strikes a blend trans surface it is absorbed and then multiple secondary rays are fired based on the mapping of the blend transparency. This means many times more rays and more processing. Blend transparency is generally multiprocessor aware I believe, however because of the specifics of the blend trans process a lot of power is used up in pre-processing before it ever even reaches the point of the CPU. To put it another way, on my own system I too observe only a small percentage of total CPU usage but I find that all 8 cores are operating, just at a low rate.

Blend transparency probably relies on the graphics card to help it make sense of this type of information before sending this info to the CPU.

For example, I can render a scene with lots of reflections and transparency or volume clouds and observe cpu usage at much less than 100% in some areas of the image, yet when rendering plain sky the processor usage jumps back up temporarily.

I too wish that something could be done about blend transparency, as it has always been the slowest render process. I remember back in my single core days of Bryce 5 hating blend transparency.